Ann Fisher commentary: Youngsters can't vote, but they are tuned in

Much ado has been made over the "youth vote" in this election cycle, how Barack Obama and his "yes we can" message have inspired young voters.

Much ado has been made over the "youth vote" in this election cycle, how Barack Obama and his "yes we can" message have inspired young voters.

The option of the first woman and the first black for president has moved many others.

But the youth vote had increased anyway in recent years. In presidential-election years between 1972 and 2000, the turnout rate had declined by 16 percentage points among young citizens before rebounding by 11 percentage points in the 2004 election, when 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, based at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Credit the terrorist attacks, the war, a couple of close elections, whatever, but young voters wouldn't need reinvigorating had they been invigorated in the first place -- at home.

Six-year-old Ava Devine of Worthington hears it at the dinner table, where, she said, the "boys are for Obama, and the girls are for Hillary." Perhaps a parallel debate rages in Republican households over the prospects of front-runner John McCain and distant trailer Mike Huckabee.

Three presidential terms will pass before Ava is eligible to vote, but in the meantime, it would help to devote the same level of effort to talking about that civic act as we do to teaching about the food pyramid and flossing.

Voters are to the system of politics in this country what vitamin D is to healthy bones. We must participate, or the system doesn't work.

Who knows if the spike in youth voting can be sustained? But we can't go wrong if we engage a first-grader.

Ava's analysis isn't exactly sophisticated: "I'm for Hillary because I think that it would be interesting to know what she would say (as president). And it would be fun to have a girl president because we haven't had one before."

But neither are the views of many voters. The differences between Barack and Hillary are narrow, and few among us are able to judge them on health-care policy, for example. Instead, many rely on gut feelings: Who makes us feel safe or irritates us the least?

For children, the line in the sand has a lot to do with where their parents stand.

I remember the third-grade lunch table at Beckwith Elementary in Grand Rapids, Mich., where I warmly endorsed Republican Richard M. Nixon. (Thank God we weren't old enough to vote.) I survived the brainwashing but still thank Mom and Dad for bringing me into the political fold.

Connie Flanagan, a professor at Penn State University, studies the roles of family and personal values in the development of political views. She thinks that my early interest was unusual but agrees that voting values start at home.

Ava took her values to school the other day and engaged in a short tiff with a classmate who was chanting, "Obama! Obama!"

"I said, 'Why are you cheering for him and not Hillary?'"

That's a start, Flanagan said.

"All of the evidence suggests that the earlier politics become something that is meaningful, the better," she said. "I don't know whether shouting names is

meaningful, but at least they know the names of candidates."

Ann Fisher is a Dispatch Metro columnist. She can be reached at 614-461-8759 or by e-mail. Check out her blog Furthermore… at blog.dispatch.com/ann/.

afisher@dispatch.com

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